The First American

by H. W. Brands

  This was a bold statement seven months before the Declaration of Independence, but hardly bolder than Franklin’s concurrent actions. During the same week Franklin and the Committee of Secret Correspondence met covertly—by night, in the Philadelphia Carpenters’ Hall rather than the State House—with one Monsieur Bonvouloir, young aristocrat sent from the French court to spy out the American situation. Franklin and the others asked whether France was well disposed toward the colonies and whether she might sell them needed arms and ammunition. Bonvouloir, without avowing any formal connection to the French government, suggested that indeed his country wished the Americans well, and that weapons might be made available.

  Concurrently Franklin, as a member of the Secret Committee (he could have been forgiven for confusing his secret committees), conducted negotiations with two French merchants who were not agents of King Louis but intimated they were. This pair hoped to profit from the Americans’ predicament by selling them the matériel they needed. The Secret Committee supplied them a list of the Continental Army’s requirements and sent them on their way, hoping for the best.

  Not long thereafter the Committee of Secret Correspondence decided to act more forthrightly. Franklin approached Silas Deane, a former colleague on the Secret Committee who had lost his place there when the Connecticut assembly, for reasons best known to itself, refused to return him to Congress after the end of 1775. Since then he had donned the frock coat of the merchant, which seemed to Franklin appropriate apparel for an American agent. “On your arrival in France, you will for some time be engaged in the business of providing goods for the Indian trade,” Franklin explained, after Deane agreed to serve the Congress in a new capacity. “This will give good countenance to your appearing in the character of a merchant, which we wish you continually to retain among the French in general, it being probable that the court of France may not like it should be known publicly that any agent from the Colonies is in that country.” In addition Deane would carry letters from Franklin to some of Franklin’s French friends; this would appear perfectly legitimate even as it allowed the envoy to contact influential people in Paris. “You will find in M. Dubourg [Franklin’s French editor] a man prudent, faithful, secret, intelligent in affairs, and capable of giving you very sage advice.”

  But Dubourg would chiefly be a conduit to the key personage in French foreign affairs, the foreign minister Comte de Vergennes. At the earliest possible moment Deane should apply for an audience with Vergennes—“acquainting him that you are in France upon business of the American Congress, in the character of a merchant, having something to communicate to him that may be mutually beneficial to France and the North American colonies.” Most pressing was the need of the colonies for arms and ammunition. Deane should point out to Vergennes that France was the first country to which the colonies were making application and “that if we should, as there is a great appearance we shall, come to a total separation from Britain, France would be looked upon as the power whose friendship it would be fittest for us to obtain and cultivate.” Britain had benefited handsomely from the commerce of the American colonies; France might inherit that benefit in the likely event of American independence.

  Franklin specified what the colonies required: “clothing and arms for twenty-five thousand men, with a suitable quantity of ammunition, and one hundred field pieces.” Ideally the French government would provide the colonies sufficient credit to purchase these items, with repayment to come from Franco-American trade. Less ideal, but acceptable, would be for the French government to allow Deane to arrange private financing. Once purchased, the items “would make a cargo which it might be well to secure by a convoy of two or three ships of war.”

  This was asking much, as Franklin knew. But there was more. Should Vergennes appear sympathetic, Deane ought to inquire “whether, if the Colonies should be forced to form themselves into an independent state, France would probably acknowledge them as such, receive their ambassadors, enter into any treaty or alliance with them?”

  The premise in this question was the sticker. France was willing to grant the Americans a modest amount of money simply for the nuisance they caused Britain; in May 1776 Louis approved an appropriation of 1 million livres. But this amount, while numerically impressive, would not keep the Continental Army in boots and bullets long. France refused to plunge deeper until the Americans proved their willingness and ability to see their task to its end.

  The willingness came with the Declaration of Independence, which was a document written for foreign readers as much as for Americans. The ability was more problematic. The collapse of the Americans’ Canadian offensive, followed by Washington’s defeat on Long Island, left the French and other Europeans with grave doubts the Americans would last another season of fighting.

  The Americans were caught in a cruel trap. They could not win without French backing, but they could not gain French backing without showing they could win. The Congress, desperate, directed Franklin to Paris.

  His purpose was the same as that of Deane (who would join him, and Arthur Lee, on a three-man diplomatic commission): to obtain arms and an alliance. The former would be paid for with promises, the latter extorted with threats. Just two weeks earlier Franklin had informed Lord Howe that reunion with Britain was beyond consideration. Now he was authorized to threaten just such a reunion, to spur France to prevent it. “It will be proper for you,” read his instructions, “to press for the immediate and explicit declaration of France in our favour, upon a suggestion that a reunion with Great Britain may be the consequence of a delay.”

  For a man of seventy, suffering from gout and assorted lesser afflictions, to leave his home in the middle of a war, to cross a wintry sea patrolled by enemy warships whose commanders could be counted on to know him even if they knew nary another American face, was no small undertaking. John Adams declined nomination to Franklin’s commission; Thomas Jefferson rebuffed election. Yet Franklin had made his decision that America must be free, and he was determined to pay whatever cost his country required. “I have only a few years to live,” he told Benjamin Rush, “and I am resolved to devote them to the work that my fellow citizens deem proper for me; or speaking as old-clothes dealers do of a remnant of goods, ‘You shall have me for what you please.’”

  Crossing the Atlantic with the old man were his two grandsons, Temple Franklin and Benny Bache. Temple’s presence reflected a family tragedy, the final estrangement between Franklin and William. Since his arrival back from London in May 1775, Franklin had seen his son but a handful of times. The first meeting, the one that set the tone for the others, occurred at Joseph Galloway’s estate in Bucks County, outside Philadelphia. Long Franklin’s ally against the Pennsylvania proprietors, Galloway had drifted away on the quarrel with Britain—or perhaps Franklin had drifted from Galloway. Galloway tried to span the gap between the colonies and England by proposing a plan of imperial union; though initially heard with respect, the plan was later shouted down in the rising clamor for independence, and the author was targeted for death threats. One grim morning he woke to find a noose on his doorstep. William Franklin of course was persona non grata anywhere near the Congress; as the prime representative of the Crown in New Jersey, he was feeling increasingly isolated even in his own province.

  Distance had divided Franklin and William for ten years; now politics did so. William was loath to raise political issues, hoping to preserve the personal relationship even if their former political partnership was beyond rescue. But Galloway felt no filial compunctions, and as the Madeira was passed around, tongues and tempers loosened in all corners of this triangle. William and Galloway described the intolerance of the colonial radicals, their abuse of moderates like themselves, their insistence on having their way even at the cost of violence to their fellow provincials and of the destruction of the empire. Franklin had not experienced the excesses his son and his former ally described, having been out of the country since before the trouble began; he knew them onl
y by hearsay, and then often from the pens and mouths of informers he distrusted, such as Thomas Hutchinson. For Franklin the corruption and self-interest that counted was the corruption and self-interest of London, which he doubtless described in some detail to Galloway and William this night. None of the three recorded their conversation, but it would have been odd if Franklin had not got around to his session in the Cockpit with Wedderburn and the lords of the Privy Council.

  Perhaps Franklin had hoped to persuade his son in person, as he had not been able to persuade him by letters, to abandon the Crown in favor of the people. The conversation at Galloway’s disabused him of any such idea. When he had last seen his son, William was thirty-four, hardly more than a boy in his father’s eyes, and new in his post as governor. Now William was middle-aged and the longest-serving royal governor in North America. Away from his father he had grown into a man of his own, as convinced of the correctness of his principles as his father was of his principles, and as stubborn in defending them. The apple had fallen close to the tree in regard of character, if not of politics.

  Franklin and William met once more, in November 1775. Franklin was returning from Massachusetts and his meeting with General Washington; accompanying him was Jane Mecom, a refugee from the British forces occupying her hometown. As they passed through Perth Amboy they visited William’s three-story mansion, which his aunt accounted “very magnificent.” But Franklin was uncomfortable there; such elegance, complete with gilt-framed portraits of King George and Queen Charlotte in the great parlor on the first floor, seemed to exemplify what the colonists were fighting against. Besides, he was the bearer of critical intelligence regarding the Continental Army; he must have guessed that William would feel compelled to pass along, in the letters he wrote regularly to London, any information his father let drop.

  It was just such letters that sealed William’s fate. In January 1776 the Continental Congress ordered the disarming of all potential threats to the patriot cause. William Alexander, the leader of the local militia and a former friend but now bitter enemy of William Franklin’s, interpreted the order as authorizing the interception of the mail of royal officials, including the governor. Alexander snatched a parcel labeled “Secret and Confidential” and addressed to Lord Dartmouth, and forwarded it to the Congress in Philadelphia. For good measure he placed the governor under house arrest.

  After some months’ deliberation—during which William managed to smuggle out additional letters, including the one to Lord Germain about his father’s mission to Canada—the case came to trial. By now the Congress was on the verge of declaring independence, and the separate colonies were forming new governments of their own. The provincial assembly of New Jersey declared William Franklin a “virulent enemy to this country, and a person that may prove dangerous.” It requested the Congress to remove him from New Jersey. The Congress, having examined the governor’s letters and determined that they contained intelligence damaging to the American cause, approved the request. In late June 1776 it ordered William sent to Connecticut, there to be placed under the authority of Governor Jonathan Trumbull.

  Franklin lifted no finger on behalf of his son. He did send sixty dollars to William’s wife, Elizabeth, who was utterly distraught by this turn of events. Betsy had feared for her husband’s life at the time of his arrest, and still worried about his health. Her own health was poor, with asthma a chronic affliction. None of her own family were anywhere near. She could not join her husband in his Connecticut exile lest his enemies—or plain criminals—loot the house in Perth Amboy.

  “I will not distress you by enumerating all my afflictions,” she wrote Franklin in August 1776, “but allow me, Dear Sir, to mention that it is greatly in your power to relieve them. Suppose that Mr. Franklin would sign a parole not dishonourable to himself, and satisfactory to Governor Trumbull; why may he not be permitted to return into this province and to his family? … Consider, my Dear and Honoured Sir, that I am now pleading the cause of your son, and my Beloved Husband. If I have said or done anything wrong I beg to be forgiven.”

  Franklin may have been inclined to forgive Betsy, but he would not forgive William. Steeling his heart, he left him to his fate.

  Worse, he stole William’s son. Temple had carried the sixty dollars to his stepmother (who at some point had been apprised, as Temple himself had been, that Temple was William’s son, rather than godson), and seeing her plight, decided to stay. Not long thereafter he proposed visiting his father in Connecticut and wrote Franklin for approval. The ostensible reason for the visit was to deliver a letter from his stepmother to his father; almost certainly he wished to see and talk to his father, whom he hardly knew.

  “I have considered the matter, and cannot approve of your taking such a journey at this time, especially alone, for many reasons which I have not had time to write,” Franklin replied. Two which he did write were that Mrs. Franklin could perfectly well get a letter to Temple’s father in care of Governor Trumbull, and that Temple needed to return to Philadelphia to resume his studies at the college there. “This is the time of life in which you are to lay the foundations of your future improvement, and of your importance among men. If this season is neglected, it will be like cutting off the spring from the year.”

  Temple chose not to defy his grandfather for his father and stepmother, and he returned to Philadelphia—just in time to leave with Franklin for France. Whether Franklin explained how this comported with his professed desire that Temple continue his studies is unclear; if he did, he probably denominated it an education in public affairs. Temple would be his amanuensis and companion. The lad would go where Franklin went and meet whom Franklin met. He would also encounter the risks—from angry waves and angry men-of-war—his grandfather encountered. It would indeed be an education in public affairs, and doubtless an exciting one.

  Benny Bache also accompanied his grandfather. Sally and Richard’s boy would not stay with Franklin and Temple in Paris but would be sent to school somewhere creditable and convenient—and safer than the rebel capital in wartime. At seven Benny could understand only part of what was happening around him, but he too must have considered it the most exciting time of his young life.

  The passage from America to France was “short but rough,” in Franklin’s contemporary account. His ship, the Reprisal, had been hastily pressed into the service of the fledgling United States navy, and though it was fast enough to capture two British merchantmen en route, it was hardly suited to the comfort of passengers. It pitched violently for nearly the whole of the thirty-day run, allowing Franklin hardly a night’s—or day’s—decent rest. The food was poor; he had to rely on salt beef because the chickens served were too tough for his teeth. His boils and rashes returned. In short, he told his daughter and son-in-law later, the voyage “almost demolished me.”

  To avoid the English Channel and the British vessels therein, the Reprisal made for the south coast of the Breton peninsula. Easterly winds hindered an ascent of the Loire to Nantes; rather than spend another night aboard the bucking vessel, Franklin packed himself, Temple, and Benny into a fishing boat that deposited them at Auray. A carriage was sent for—the village had none—to carry them to Nantes.

  At Nantes, Franklin was recognized, but his purposes he kept to himself. “I have acquainted no one here with this commission, continuing incognito as to my public character,” he wrote Silas Deane. He needed to sound out the French government before lowering his mask. Yet his silence simply fueled speculation. The learned doctor was traveling with his two grandsons; were they defecting from the American cause? Money appeared to be no object in his accommodations or conveyance; had he absconded with the American treasury?

  In that impoverished neighborhood not even the carte blanche of the Congress could eliminate the discomforts and hazards of travel. “The carriage was a miserable one,” Franklin wrote of one stretch of the journey, “with tired horses, the evening dark, scarce a traveller but ourselves on the road; and to make it
more comfortable, the driver stopped near a wood we were to pass through, to tell us that a gang of eighteen robbers infested that wood, who but two weeks ago had robbed and murdered some travelers on that very spot.”

  Yet there were compensations. Tired and uncomfortable as he was, Franklin observed the countryside and its denizens with care. “On the road yesterday we met six or seven country-women, in company, on horseback and astride; they were all of fair white and red complexions, but one among them was the fairest woman I ever beheld.”

  Franklin’s arrival in Paris was a personal triumph. “The celebrated Franklin arrived at Paris the 21st of December and has fixed the eyes of every one upon his slightest proceeding,” recorded one French diarist. Another stated, “Doctor Franklin, arrived a little since from the English colonies, is mightily run after, much feted by the savants. He has a most pleasing expression, very little hair, and a fur cap which he keeps constantly on his head.” This observer was pleased to note additionally: “Our esprits forts have adroitly sounded him as regards his religion, and they believe that they have discovered that he is a believer in their own—that is to say, that he has none at all.” Some claimed Franklin as a Frenchman; the name “Franquelin,” they pointed out, was common in Picardy. Others were content that he was part of the classical—if not mythological—heritage of Western civilization. “He was not given the title Monsieur; he was addressed simply as Doctor Franklin, as one would have addressed Plato or Socrates,” said one who so addressed him. “If it is true that Prometheus was only a man, may one not believe that he was a natural philosopher like Franklin?” Poems were written to honor the American sage, the great philosopher of liberty. “It is the mode today,” observed a Franklin-watcher in the French capital just three weeks after his arrival, “for everybody to have an engraving of M. Franklin over the mantelpiece.”